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Updated: July 10, 2025
But he tends to improve, and the Eddas show him at his best. Here he is called the All-father, the Ruler of all, who gave man a soul that shall never perish; and we hear that he needs no food and takes no share himself in the feasts of the heroes. Thor or Donar, Thunder, is said to be the mightiest of the gods; he is identified, as we saw, with Jove, but he is a rougher and more primitive deity.
The compositions of the Skalds were called Sagas, many of which have come down to us, and contain valuable materials of history, and a faithful picture of the state of society at the time to which they relate. The Eddas and Sagas have come to us from Iceland.
We must expect them to be true to type and conditions, as we expect the other ideas of the Chinese to be, and looking for them in the light of this knowledge we shall find them just where we should expect to find them. The great sagas and eddas exalted among the world's literary masterpieces, and forming part of the very life of a large number of its inhabitants, are absent in China.
The doctrines of the Gothic philosophers, as they appear in the Eddas, concerning the eternity of matter, the renewal or succession of worlds, and reincarnation are the same as those taught by Pythagoras, the Stoics, and other Greek schools of thought.
What a work had Christianity to perform upon such a people as the Icelanders, for instance, of the tenth century! to substitute in rude, savage minds the idea of its benign and gentle Founder for that of the Thor and Woden of Norse mythology; the forgiveness, charity, and humility of the Gospel for the revenge, hatred, and pride inculcated by the Eddas.
We come to know more of these gods when we find them in the Eddas, but it is scarcely legitimate to fill in the South German gods of the first century from the North German gods of the same names of the eleventh or twelfth. We reserve, therefore, our description of the German gods till we come to the Northern mythology.
Thus these Angles, Jutes, and Saxons, slowly disciplining themselves to the new ideal to them in the ninth century come the Vikings. They are not less conspicuous in valour, nor less profoundly sensitive to the wonder and mystery of life, the poets in other lands of the Eddas and of the Northern Myths. England as we know it is not yet formed.
The fact that both Loki and Lox end their earthly career at a waterfall is very curious. The two also become, in wizard fashion, women at will. But it is chiefly in the extreme and wanton devilishness of their tricks that they are alike. Many other resemblances will suggest themselves to those who know the Eddas.
This scion of a long line of lawless bloods a Scandinavian Berserker, if there ever was one the literary heir of the Eddas was specially created to wage that war to smite the conventionality which is the tyrant of England with the hammer of Thor, and to sear with the sarcasm of Mephistopheles the hollow hypocrisy sham taste, sham morals, sham religion of the society by which he was surrounded and infected, and which all but succeeded in seducing him.
Many men for years went over the history of German literature, from the Eddas and Nibelungenlied down, including a few living writers, carefully selecting saga, legends, Maerchen, fables, proverbs, hymns, a few prayers, Bible tales, conundrums, jests, and humorous tales, with many digests, epitomes and condensation of great standards, quotations, epic, lyric, dramatic poetry, adventure, exploration, biography, with sketches of the life of each writer quoted, with a large final volume on the history of German literature.
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